[3.0] Lolth, Lady of Chaos (Caustic Arrow Life/ES/Evasion - over 8.5k eHP and 14-40k evasion)

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Hey friend, i'm looking for something to play into maps. So far i'm interesting in your Azure Knight build and this, what do you think would get running easier/faster and survivability wise? thanks.

In my opinion:
- Azure Knight is much, much better versus bosses and pushing maps while undergeared, Caustic Arrow struggles with single target dps.
- Caustic Arrow will be safer in general mapping, since most of the time you run away from danger, not towards it.
- Caustic Arrow will clear maps quicker and more comfortably, since you just run + shoot in general direction, with Blade Flurry you have to actively aim to pick off stragglers or Whirl towards them if they are just outside of your range, while Caustic Arrow can just fire and forget, killing everything in bigger area and from greater distance.
- So all in all, Azure Knight might get to higher tiers quicker, but Caustic Arrow is going to be better at actual map farming once it gets to higher tiers. Azure Knight's power is mostly in bosskilling, it was never a build designed to clear a map in less then a minute/two.

I have never started a league with CA before, and even this league I started with Azure Knight again to see in practice how nerfs have affected the build. So because of this, I'm not sure how CA performs as a league starter.

Now, if I were you, I would look around in other Caustic Arrow builds on the forums and see in the comments what people say about their leveling experience. I don't think my build is much different then other ones already posted, maybe some pathing here and there is different, I picked life/evasion/es as defensive mechanics, and my build's BiS helmet is The Gull, that's about it.
So I guess you can get an idea about leveling/early map grinding power from other threads :D

Ahh I see. Honestly i'm leaning towards this build more so now. Do you think there's anything to substitute in while leveling to make bossing easier until maps? Maybe an ED?

I believe ED is going to work best, if you dedicate a weapon swap to it you can double your effective dps vs boss, using both CA and ED.
I also had this crazy idea of getting one of these zombie talismans, and throwing it under the boss for constant proc of Profane Bloom, but it's unreliable, however funny it might be.

Do you have any idea if a Delirium essesnce crafted bow is better in 3.0. Looking around I see it very split on if you should be using a +3 bow or a decay bow, thoughts?

Caustic Arrow cloud doens't apply Decay, you need to hit the target with your arrow, so your AoE clear will be slower with Decay even if total dps was the same.

+3 Bow beats plain Decay bow (170k dps fully buffed vs 130k single target).
Decay +1 gems means 10k dps loss single target.
Decay +1 bow means 30k dps loss.
Decay +1 bow and +1 gems matches dps of +3 bow.
Decay +2 bow means around 15k dps loss.

So in my opinion, Decay, after all the nerfs (from 1000 to 750, and then to 500) isn't great for end game, and I believe that spamming alterations and getting +2 bow will be both cheaper and easier to do then Essence crafting. However, if you do craft such a bow (Decay and some gem or bow levels), you might make quite a bit of currency selling it, as people overestimate Decay's power a lot.

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Step 7: Remove crafted mod

How to do it? Explain please.

You need to remove "cannot roll attack mods" from the bow at this step, which is what Catarina can do when her level is 7 or higher and costs 1 Scour.